


Counting Stars [ the greenthumb remix ]

by surely_silly



Series: goldilocks planet [2]
Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Discrimination, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 10:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3286949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surely_silly/pseuds/surely_silly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not quite a 180 degree turn.</p><p>(Or, the one where Inaho is of Vers. Truly, and wholeheartedly.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. tender, loving

"Inaho?"

"Yes, Seylum?"

"Tell me what makes the Earth shine blue again?"

"Again?"

"Please," she says, and smiles.

He sighs, though the corners of his lips twitch.

The words come easy enough, slip well worn from his lips. They're soothing, and for the time being, he can ignore the exhaustion and the aches if it means he can make her smile. See her dream, and hope for a better future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Do you think that we could thrive together? Us and the terrans?"

"With care," he says, and looks back down at the veranda, arms folded behind his back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _With care,_ he repeats to himself, and breathes.


	2. polaris

"I want you to have this," Inaho tells her, slipping the bracelet off his wrist.

It's crude, clearly made by a child and for a child, extended by nylon on each end, and the wooden beads are worn by the flow of time against them, but.

He can't go with her, and this is the best he can do.

"But you said that this is all you have of your sister," she protests, eyes round with surprise.

Inaho presses it into her hand, and closes her fingers over it with his own. He lingers for one brief moment before pulling away, eyes drifting to Eddelrittuo at her side. "It's fine," he says, and the handmaiden shifts uncomfortably under his gaze before he looks back to the princess. "You'll just have to give it back to me later, won't you?"

She smiles at him, eyes shining bright.

Seylum tries to put it on, and struggles briefly, one handed, before giving him a tiny pleading look.

He helps her, lips twitching, and brings it around her wrist, slips the button through the cord hoop on the end. Inaho settles it on the inner of her wrist, and turns her hand over to straighten the faded clover on the other side.

"I'll bring peace to our worlds," she whispers, looking down at it before back up to him. "Thank you." 

 _I believe in you,_ he thinks as she leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _I believe in you,_ he thinks from his place on the floor, as Lord Cruhteo walks away, and pain cuts bright across his face.

_I believe in you._


	3. fickle

There're bad moments when it's almost like reality slips between his fingers, like water, like sand.

 

 

 

 

_she's gone, she's gone, but she'll be back._

 

 

 

 

Her Royal Highness settles the void.

Their hatred, their amniosty, their abuse. It's relative. It's not real if he doesn't think it is. Probably. But. It's hard without her. He feels like his voice has shriveled up and turned to dust, unused, hoarse, forgets he has one. The cane marks barely have time to turn an ugly yellow before they are forced back to purple and blue.

It's worse without her.

Maybe.

Inaho's forgetting. He's not sure.


	4. questionnaire

The tablet screen is split and cracked, but functional, and Inaho wipes the steam from it with a threadbare towel before the sweat of his forehead.

He steadies it as the washing machine beneath him rumbles, and gives a lurch. It's barely distinguishable from the canopy of noise of the other machines around him, but clearly in the worst shape. They believe him contagious of a sort, unwilling to wash his clothes or touch them, and scarce when he does it himself. It's fine, a bit amusing, and ridiculous, but Inaho barely cares as it gives him time alone.

It connects, the wireless signal only at half strength, but he is patient, and can wait as it struggles along with each of his inane web searches. Offline, Inaho has yet to make his way through more than half of the enormous, downloaded data packets, at least a third password protected. But, online? The wonders of the terran Internet are astounding, vast, and constantly updating with each passing moment.

Nothing like the limited and stilted network of Vers that the tablet rarely connects to. He'll honestly miss it when, eventually, it's time to return to Vers as curious as it is.

Picking up speed, the tablet loads pages easier and easier, adjusting, reaching, and the bars crawl upward one.

 _Shinawara, Japan,_  he thinks to himself after a moment, rubbing the towel between his fingers.  _Why there?_

It's unnoteworthy in all the ways that matter. An utterly worthless location, far from the more important part of the prefecture.

_Why there?_

Under him, the machine gives another jerk, and stills with a beep.

 _Later then,_ he thinks, and shuts down the screen.

 


	5. terrible, horrible creature

The terran scares Eddelrittuo,

 

 

 

and she's not quite sure why.


	6. doomed to repeat

It's his eyes, he's sure. The harsh lights run them bright crimson, like rich, oxygenated blood.

 

 

 

It marks him as different, more easily. They tend to forget, but with a flash of red their faces twist, turn ugly and hateful.

 

And if Inaho knows anything, it's that humankind as a whole has a bad history with anything, with anyone, that is different.


	7. Chapter 7

" _Call me Seylum._ "

And, the dream ends there, Inaho blinking awake into the dark of his room. His pillow is a solid weight over the back of his head, the blanket digging a line across the cheek of his face between it and the mat he lays on.

The silence is deafening, loud in his ears, and he exhales with a tremble, fingers curling tight.

 _This too will pass,_ he tells himself, blanket itchy against his skin.


	8. error

_Ah._

Inaho blinks once, twice. His hands curl and unfurl at his sides, pinching into the fabric of his pants, and.

That can't be right. He must be hearing him wrong. These wavelengths, already angled, almost completely severed, must be have been entirely severed. Stoppered, tampered with.

 

 

 

 

 

Her Royal Highness can't be dead.

 

 

 

 

 

"You're lying," is what he wants to say, the words spilling, pooling in his mouth. Burning.

His legs weaken, but lock and tremble.

The vassal narrows his eyes. "You are to report to the docking bay. In thirty minutes. For landing preparations and deployment," he says, slow and enunciated, before with a roll of his eyes, he spins on his heel and walks away.

 

 

 

 

 

 _No,_ Inaho thinks, and crumbles.


	9. nominal

_Seylum has terribly grand dreams. They're lofty and so very naive, even for a child._

 

 

 

 

 

_At least, that is what he's told. Inaho's not sure what to believe at first. How can they tell him to change her mind, chase those thoughts from her pretty, little blonde head, and knock him down in the next moment, dig their heels into him with cruel smiles._

_He knows the King means well, he really does. Inaho is sent off to learn, to be of value to the family, to placate the dissenters. It's exactly what they wanted all along, in the end._

_Children can be cruel, the adults more so. They just needed him out from under watchful eyes. To make sure he is Loyal. That he is of Vers, that he knows he lives of good will alone. That he knows that he is_ — ** _is a burden._**

 

 

 

 

_Inaho learns, and knows he is of Vers. Truly, he is. He is Devout, and it is unwavering._

_He knows he needs to be twice as good, twice as mannered, twice as obedient, for all his faults. Inaho knows it will never be enough. Not for them. Never ever._

_But._

_It's okay._

_Vers is Red, the Blood of the People, the fire that keeps them warm, hearty and hale. Vers is the Royal Family, and no one can ever tell him otherwise._

_Vers is a kind hand upon his head, and shining blue eyes._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_It is Home in the people who welcome him back._


	10. a horizon

"— _are you listening, terran?_ "

This isn't terribly new.

Inaho flutters his eyes, blinking as the space before him gains clarity, turns oh so very _blue_. He tightens his hands on the steering guides, presses back in his seat, and manages a hoarse, "Yes," even as he struggles to place the conversation.

There's a _hrrmpf._ "I can't believe I got saddled with the _simpleton_ terran," is hissed over the internal communications, and a muscle jumps in Inaho's jaw.

"Forgive me, Milord," he replies, voice level, and the Baron is mollified, if only a little.

 

A deep breath.

 

He tilts the handles, and carves a sharp curve up and above the splotchy cloud cover, the Landing Spire a pillar of dark red bisecting the sky. Inaho taps the radar, the city burning below becoming a grid. It looks familiar, a distant thought, but he pulls it back, and widens the radius, path lit with a white line.

 

 

 

 

_We're at war,_  he thinks, numb, and watches a cluster of red dots slowly appear on the tiny screen.  _Oh, Seylum._

 

 

 

 

Their fighter jets are sleek, glimmering silver, and so very outdated. It makes it all to easy to shoot them from the sky, to send them falling like comets across the dark of space, trails of flaming smoke. Inaho catches the last pilot across the nose of the sky carrier, and the terran disintegrates between one blink and the next.

Knuckles white, he takes the rewarded deprecating praise like the good little masquerading Martian he's supposed to be. 

 

 

 

 

_Seylum, Seylum._   _Should I hate them?_

 

 

 

 

"We're above target, disconnecting Nilokeras."

The communication shuts off, and Inaho rotates the cameras. On the bridge there is a small cluster of terrans, and they live for all of a strange and long moment. Only two survive, fallen away near the divider. One dark haired, the other blonde, and they look so terribly young.

In the opposite direction are kataphrakts readying fire, so he twists the screens, and splits them smaller before dissolving the view on the fleeing terrans. He lets the two kataphrakts slip past Trillram as he turns around, distracted, and watches the rest be decimated.

Watches them die.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Oh, Seylum._


	11. roche limit

Protocol hasn't changed at all since... since the first war. The books on it are dusty and old, rarely read, and yellowing from the time passing them by. Inaho remembers the spines cracking as he carefully peeled them open, the disuse clear. Remembers what the old and dusty books on kataphrakts told him.

He wasn't supposed to be reading them. The newer texts were only a few years younger, but they were about as slim as his finger width with barely a tenth of the necessary information. He's sure most people aren't supposed to read them either.

But. Inaho read them, still hoping that maybe, just maybe, if he learned enough he'd be more of an asset than a burden. He was wrong, of course. Things never changed, but he learned all that he could and more. And.

 

 

Protocol states this: Excursions are recorded. From the ejection of the aircraft, kataphrakt, and portal activation, everything is recorded in real time.

Which means the cameras are never off. And, how could they ever be for big and blind Nilokeras? It would be nothing without its eyes in the sky, after all.

Which means—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Inaho forgets how to breathe._


End file.
